English - Dramatist | July 3, 1937 -
The way 'star' used to be reserved for a small number of people, and when the star category became so vast, they came up with 'superstar,' and then they came up with 'megastar.'
Tom Stoppard
PeopleSmallWayUpStarUsed
Like almost everything else from the West, the Romantic Revolution arrived late in Russia.
RomanticRevolutionLateEverything
Chekhov understood that people are mysterious and can't be reduced to what we nowadays call 'motivation.'
PeopleMotivationMysteriousCall
I think probably I've been influenced by Chekhov and Walt Disney, if you see what I mean.
ThinkYouMeanSeeBeenI Think
Very often in Chekhov, where he exhibits a little bit of human behavior that you recognize as true, you give a little laugh. It's like a reflex.
BehaviorLaughYouTrueHumanGive
In Chekhov, everything blends into its opposite, just fractionally, and this is sort of unsettling. And that's why you end up 100 years later asking, 'Is that moment tragic or comic?'
MomentEndYouWhy100 YearsAsking
A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set.
FunctionWriterSetMuchMovie
One of the nice things about the world of filmmaking is that you make friends in the business. Sometimes directors feel a script needs something, but they're not sure what it is, so they show it to a friend; if the friend is a writer, he ends up kicking around with that script for a while.
FriendBusinessWorldFriendsYou
'Shakespeare in Love' was a particularly happy film.
LoveHappyFilmShakespeare
The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other consideration, is tacitly abandoned in the way we live.
LiveSafetyInnocentWayAbandoned
The idea that being human and having rights are equivalent - that rights are inherent - is unintelligible in a Darwinian world.
WorldHumanBeing HumanRightsBeing
A 'human right' is, by definition, timeless. It cannot adhere to some societies and not others, at some times and not at other times.
OthersHumanRightTimelessCannot
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Tom Stoppard quotes